Santa Cruz had been in close
correspondence with Guise on this very subject, and many officers in the
Armada must have been acquainted with Santa Cruz's views. The Scotch
Catholic nobles were still savage at Mary Stuart's execution, and had
the Armada anchored in Leith Roads with twenty thousand men, half a
million ducats, and a Santa Cruz at its head, it might have kindled a
blaze at that moment from John o' Groat's Land to the Border.
But no such purpose occurred to the Duke of Medina Sidonia. He probably
knew nothing at all of Scotland or its parties. Among the many
deficiencies which he had pleaded to Philip as unfitting him for the
command, he had said that Santa Cruz had acquaintances among the English
and Scotch peers. He had himself none. The small information which he
had of anything did not go beyond his orange gardens and his tunny
fishing. His chief merit was that he was conscious of his incapacity;
and, detesting a service into which he had been fooled by a hysterical
nun, his only anxiety was to carry home the still considerable fleet
which had been trusted to him without further loss. Beyond Scotland and
the Scotch Isles there was the open ocean, and in the open ocean there
were no sandbanks and no English guns.
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